I Read Books: Five Red Herrings

In Galloway, Sayers tells us, everyone is either a painter or a fisherman*, and some are both (which is the best; good weather means you can paint, rain brings on the fish, and if it’s completely atrocious you can go to a pub and complain about the fishing and/or painting). One painting fisherman, Campbell, has arguments with a lot of others, and then is found dead. Due to the circumstances he can only have been killed by a painter. Six suspects are identified and for a variety of reasons none of them have a decent alibi. Five, of course, are red herrings, and one is the murderer.

It takes quite a while simply to get hold of all of the suspects. There’s quite a lot of logistics involved – cars, bicycles, trains, bikes in cars, bikes on trains, stolen bikes, a bike that ends up in Euston Station of all places. The solution combines a variety of chance and improvised events, mixed up with a convoluted plan devised in a panic that very nearly works. The denouement is a recreation of the crime which proves various points, though perhaps most importantly flushes the killer from cover.

There’s quite a lot of timetabling and schedules which is good because if you were trying to solve it while reading** the times, dates, places and so on would not make for scintillating description or dialogue. Instead you can scan them as you go by if you aren’t interested and make a note if you are.

Sorry for the poor scan of this annoying paragraph

There’s a fair amount of life in Galloway in the 30s, which is cool, a couple of good characters, and quite a lot of stock amusing characters. There’s something of a formula to it; it is almost a police procedural, albeit a complicated one. The pieces come together out of time and place, but even if they didn’t do that, it would still be a difficult mystery. And it’s livened by Sayers most famous creation, Lord Peter Wimsey, who finally solves it after some difficulty.

Read This: For a high quality, entertaining detective novel
Don’t Read This: For something extraordinarily interesting.

* Obviously we meet many people who are neither in the course of this novel, especially the women, none of whom fish though a couple do paint.
** I don’t think that a novel, even a detective novel, is a puzzle to be solved, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be puzzles as part of a novel, and if someone wants to solve them, please knock yourself out.